The mountain was dying. Not with a slow, geological sigh, but in a violent, seismic convulsion. The carefully constructed architecture of the Oriax fortress, built upon the bones of the old monastery, was crumbling like a sandcastle before the tide. But this was no natural tide. This was the backlash of a severed leash, the fury of a god whose chains had been rattled.
The roar that had torn through the stone was not a sound. It was a fundamental shockwave, a declaration of existence that transcended vibration. Delaney felt it in the water of her cells, in the synapses of her brain. It was Lane, but Lane unmade and remade, his will no longer a focused instrument but a raw, elemental force.
She dragged Colton's limp form through a shuddering corridor, the floor heaving beneath them. Dust and chunks of black crystal rained down. The hellish purple light flickered and died, replaced by the angry red pulse of emergency systems and the real, honest orange glow of fire. The ordered silence was gone, replaced by a cacophony of destruction that she could only feel as a series of concussive blows.
Ahead, a section of the ceiling collapsed, blocking their path. Delaney skidded to a halt, despair clawing at her. They were trapped.
Then, the rubble exploded outward. Not from the force of falling rock, but from a concentrated blast of pure negation. The stones didn't shatter; they simply ceased to be, vaporized into dust. And standing in the newly created opening was Lane.
He was wreathed in a storm of darkness, but it was no longer the controlled, channeled energy of the Anchor. This was wild, untamed. His eyes burned with a cold white fire, the humanity she had glimpsed now completely submerged beneath an ocean of rage. He was the Schism given a single, terrible purpose.
His gaze swept over her, over the bleeding Colton slung over her shoulder. There was no recognition, only a cold assessment. She was an object in the path of the avalanche.
He raised a hand, and a wave of force gathered around him, aimed to obliterate the obstruction in his path. Which was them.
Lane! She screamed the name without sound, a desperate, silent vibration lost in the maelstrom.
It was Colton who acted. With a final, gut-wrenching effort, he shoved himself away from her, stumbling to his feet. He stood between her and Lane, a pitiful shield against a tsunami. He wasn't looking at Lane. He was looking back at her, his lips moving, shaping two final, silent words.
Run. Now.
He turned to face the unleashed power, and he did not raise his hands in defense. Instead, he did the one thing that might create a distraction. He reached into the heart of his own being, into whatever well of power he possessed that allowed him to manipulate frequencies, and he did not project a shield. He projected a memory.
It wasn't a vibration Delaney could feel, but she saw its effect on Lane. The raging storm around him faltered. The cold fire in his eyes flickered. For a split second, the image of Colton seemed to shift, to be overlaid with the ghost of another man—a laughing, loyal friend from a life before the darkness. It was a ghost, a echo of a bond that had existed long before Delaney had entered their lives.
It was the last gift Colton could give.
Lane's attack, when it came, was not the obliterating wave he had intended. It was a reflexive, violent lash of power, a swatting aside of an irritant. It struck Colton and threw him back like a leaf in a gale. His body hit the far wall with a sickening crunch and did not move.
But the hesitation was enough.
The momentary conflict on Lane's face twisted into a snarl. The ghost had been banished. The rage returned, fresher and more focused. His eyes locked onto Delaney. She was the source of the disruption. The cause of this pain.
He took a step toward her.
Delaney stood her ground. There was nowhere to run. The corridor was collapsing behind her. Colton was gone. The void inside her was a yawning chasm, but it was all she had left. She had unshackled this monster. She had to face it.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His intention was a physical pressure, a promise of annihilation. He raised his hand again, the power coalescing into a spear of absolute darkness, aimed directly at her heart.
She did not try to defend herself. She knew she couldn't. Instead, she did the only thing she had left. She opened herself completely. She dropped every barrier, every shred of self-preservation. She embraced the void he had created within her, and she aimed it not as a weapon, but as an offering. A mirror.
As the spear of darkness left his fingertips, screaming toward her, she did not flinch. She held her arms wide, a silent invitation.
The spear struck the center of her chest.
There was no impact. No pain. There was only absorption.
The vast, hungry emptiness inside her drank the attack. It was a bottomless well, and Lane's power was a torrential downpour. The darkness vanished into her, and for a terrifying moment, she felt it filling the void. She felt the immense, cold power flooding the emptiness, threatening to overwhelm her, to rewrite her very being.
She was not trying to fight his power. She was trying to remember hers.
As the coldness threatened to consume her, she focused on the one vibration that was uniquely her own. Not the memory of his frequency, not the borrowed power of the whistle or the lodestone. But the vibration of her own name, as she had felt it form in her throat when she first spoke to him in the Anchor chamber. A weak, insignificant thing. A single, fragile note in the symphony of destruction.
Delaney.
She held onto that note, a single candle flame in an Arctic gale.
And in the space where his power met her fragile identity, something impossible happened.
The bond did not re-form. That bridge was ash. But for a single, shattering instant, the flow of power reversed.
He had been pouring his rage, his pain, his immense, corrupted power into the void. And for a heartbeat, the void showed him what it contained. Not nothingness. But an echo. The ghost of her pain. The vast, silent ocean of loss and betrayal that his severance had created. The crushing weight of the silence he had condemned her to. The memory of his kiss, a final, brutal lie.
It was not an attack. It was an reflection. A truth.
Lane staggered back as if he had been the one struck. A raw, agonized cry was torn from his throat—a human sound, full of a horror that was entirely his own. The storm of power around him winked out. The cold fire in his eyes died, replaced by a dawning, gut-wrenching comprehension.
He looked at her, truly looked at her, for the first time since she had entered the fortress. He saw her not as a ghost or an obstacle, but as a person. A person he had utterly and completely destroyed.
"Delaney," he whispered. His voice was ragged, stripped of godhood, reduced to a broken man's plea.
The mountain gave a final, monumental shudder. The corridor around them disintegrated. The floor fell away.
There was no time for reconciliation. No time for forgiveness. There was only falling.
Lane's hand shot out, not with power, but with desperate speed. His fingers closed around her wrist as the world dropped out from under them. They fell together into the roaring darkness, the ruins of the fortress and the screaming heart of the Schism swallowing them whole. The Anchor and the Void, plummeting into the abyss.